


you're my king and i'm your lionheart

by plantagenet



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-23
Updated: 2012-04-23
Packaged: 2017-11-04 04:09:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/389589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plantagenet/pseuds/plantagenet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once, she had bent down to kiss a boy with blood still in his mouth, and he had tasted like a battle and then there was a battle inside of her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you're my king and i'm your lionheart

In her life, there had only ever been three kings— she did not expect a fourth. Mad Aerys had been slit through the back, far away, while she was still at the breast. She came of age under the reign of Robert Baratheon, who drank up his ale in a distant castle while the Crag ran dry, and then his son was king. Joffrey was young when he took the Iron Throne - younger, even, than she - and he had all the gold in the West. There were five men who called themselves king in those days when war shook the horizon and men wept or raved for a taste of battle, but, for her, there would only be one.

Jeyne understood her place in things and knew that there were more dangers than spears or lances waiting to snatch a woman’s breath away as she grew old and crooked. She fully expected to encounter them each in turn and, for that, she felt brave. If the war did not strip her breath away, she would like as not die in service to a woman’s work, pushing out life as it pulled away from her. The boy king, gold and mighty, would be her last, she was sure of that—until the gods caught wind of the jape and sent a hail of arrows to strike resolution from the sky. 

_No_ , she would tell herself later as the wind tried to suck the paint from the carthouse doors. She would shut her eyes and push her tongue against her teeth to force away the doubts. _It was a not punishment. I was brave._

Once, she had bent down to kiss a boy with blood still in his mouth, and he had tasted like a battle and then there was a battle inside of her.

The change came violently, willingly: her girlhood shattered in an instant and kings were never again what they had seemed. The war came to share her bed and whispered apologies in her ear. He kept his arms around her to warm his mail against her skin while she lent her tears to the effort, and in the morning, the war married with her. In time, she learned how to make him smile, how to draw the lines from his face and when he kissed her, she forgot the taste of iron. 

(When she was a child, her mother used to comb her hair and tell her how Jeyne Westerling was a queen’s name. She is not a child anymore and it is no longer just a story.)

-

Robb had burned with a fever when she first stood by him, but now he is cold, as perhaps a king ought to be. He treats with his envoys and with the maesters who have come to consult the cause. She sits in the hall of Riverrun, plucking at her hoop, watching as the old men click their links, gold against copper, and her husband bends his head to listen.

He turns like a spit in his sleep and his wolf howls in the yard. She lies awake beside him saying nothing until her eyes ache and she can take no more. 

“Your men will follow you ‘til the end,” she tells him in the dark. She feels his eyelashes flick against her bare shoulder, and he shifts so that he has an arm over her, her back pressed to his chest.

“And after that?” Robb asks. His fingers trace shapes over her hip. “A country is not an army.”

“The war makes you worry,” Jeyne says, though it hurts. Sometimes when he rushes in to greet her she can practically hear his heart beating against his breastplate. Her boy is made of war, she knows it, and she is his hearth-fire and keeps him warm. 

“I’m too young.”

“And so am I,” she cuts in. “We are both young. We have time. We can learn.”

In the morning, he races to the Ruby Ford to attend the damages, to restore hope, to be the king they raised up on shoulders that are now breaking.

He comes back in the night and she has waited with a candle lit. When he strips himself of his furs and armor, the layers of boiled leather and skins, shrinking back down to the boy he is, she can see the red lines across his back where the metal has rubbed him raw. She thinks they are like rivers, like valleys, crushed into his flesh. 

_You must be as hard and as fierce as the North._

She traces her fingers along them, apologizes when he flinches, until he turns and catches her by the wrists, then bends his head to kiss her palms instead.

-

“Drink,” her mother says and Jeyne obeys. It’s bitter, even with honey, but she forces it down quick as she can, trying to taste the clay cup instead of the tea. 

“Why hasn’t it happened yet?” she grimaces, and Sybell strokes her hair and tells her it will. 

“The war shall end soon, Jeyne,” she says. “There is no reason to try so hard.” That makes her weep; she married the war, stepped on his vows to another. She must bear the weight of the peace.

“I want to help him.”

“Childbirth is dangerous,” She has her head tucked beneath Sybell’s chin with her mother’s fingers in her coal black hair. “You should not wish for it so soon.” Jeyne says nothing, though she feels cold and stiff under her mother’s touch. “You would give your life for a kingdom that is yet to be won?”

“It wouldn’t be for them,” she nearly grinds her teeth on it, wishes for Catelyn Stark to be there with her, “it would be for _him_.”

“That is the same thing,” Sybell sighs and Jeyne sits up with a jolt.

“I don’t think the tea is working,” she tells her mother. 

“I drank it every day for a year before your brother arrived. Before him, I had only birthed dead little girls,” her mother’s face hollows and her voice goes tight. “You didn’t know that.” 

Even now, as they make through the river valley for Castamere, Jeyne cannot summon the strength to ask if it was a lie.

-

The king will leave Riverrun soon to ride for the Twins and his uncle’s wedding. It is advised that Jeyne not come, and her husband does listen to counsel. 

“It shall be the first time that we are apart,” she mutters from the edge of their bed. He is washing his face and shoulders with cold water in a bowl by the door and she cannot see his face. He will leave his bride and his wolf and his blade aside when he attends: a wedding is no ceremony for a soldier and his spoils. 

“It will not be the last,” he sighs, and she frowns, beside herself, folding her knees up beneath her. “Afterwards, we move to take back the North.” Her chest aches when he says it.

“And what about Joffrey?” (There must always be a Stark in Winterfell and she knows she will not stop him.)

“Joffrey can wait.”

“How long will it take?”

He pauses and looks back at her. 

“As short a time as I am able.”

With that, she knows she should be content. A king has his duties, and so does his queen but it is a pity their kingdom cannot extend from the foot of their bed to the pillows. She will hold his mother’s seat and keep courage while he is gone. She hopes she says it with a look, because he turns back to the water and after that they are quiet for a while.

When he speaks again his face is dry and his voice is new and determined.

“The maesters have told me about a book they keep in the Citadel. The Lives of Four Kings, Kaeth’s work.”

She leans back to put the war from her mind and looks him in the eye.

“And what is so important about that?”

“There is a lesson in it.”

“Never invade Dorne?” Robb smiles at that; it makes it easier for her.

“That a kingdom is a breathing body. That the king is the head; his knights are the arms and his people are the feet. His council is the heart, his financiers: the belly, the maesters are his eyes. With every battle it bleeds, and a king must attend.”

He swallows and she knows he is thinking of what is lost beyond of the Trident, and what he will find when he goes. 

“I thought it was just some silly book about kings and their conquests.”

“A king is conquest.” _And you are the king._

She was right before, they are so young—they are not even done growing and he has won every battle and knocked down every castle.

“And what part has a queen to play in the kingdom?” she asks it coyly, though she wonders.

There is a vacancy in his face that tells her there’s nothing the maesters have mentioned that might pertain to her. Still, he closes the distance between them and sinks to his knees before her.

“A queen is the neck,” he says, smiling, inventive. _That which can turn the king._ She makes herself a mirror, closing her fingers in his red curls - it isn’t difficult. His cheeks are rough and icy. 

“I was expecting a cruder answer.”

He kisses her.

“Does this mean that I might sway your Grace?” she murmurs, after, hoping he still smiles. Such a silly question; he’s swayed to her already.

“Please don’t call me that. Not you.” His eyes are closed, his head resting against hers.

“Don’t go.” Her voice is a whisper. 

“I have to go, Jeyne.” His hands are tangled in her hair.

“Come back.”

“I’m here now.”

-

She begs him to take her with him.  _You have your wolf and your blade, why not me?_ Three times she begs and each time she asks with a kiss, beneath the gate, under the tree, at the roadside, and each time he is further away.

In the end she cannot win and the ride back to Riverrun is slow and painful. The moon’s blood is on her when she arrives and, beneath her mother’s gaze, she crumbles and weeps for all the empty spaces. 

Sybell makes her a new tea, one to help her sleep. 

She sleeps soundlessly after that.

-

They cut off his head.

They cut off his head and replace it with his beast’s. A false king. A false head. The North fails. 

But that is not what makes her wail and cut her hands on the cobbles when they come riding back with the news. 

It took three arrows to bring her king down. Three little injuries, red as kisses, had broken her husband and brought him to his knees. One for the gate. One for the godswood. One for the road.

_I should not have kissed him so much_ , she would think as the landscape shrunk back from their wheels. A distant fog would drift in from the riverlands, making a memory of the rocks and trees, and of the glittering tongue of the Red Fork. She would try to be brave, even then.

_Gods, no. I did not kiss him enough._


End file.
